Atalay: No tolerance for trouble-makers
ANKARA - Hürriyet Daily News
“Trouble-makers” in Turkey’s security forces will not be tolerated following last month’s intelligence crisis, Deputy Prime Minister Beşir Atalay has said while also insisting that the National Intelligence Organization (MİT) and the police were working in harmony.“We will never tolerate [disputes] at such a critical time when we are fighting terrorism. Those who create such problems will not be able to stay at their places. We will take the toughest of measures on this issue,” Atalay said yesterday in an interview with the private NTV channel. Atalay also denied that under-fire MİT chief Hakan Fidan and the head of the Police Department, Mehmet Kılıçlar, had quarreled at a recent meeting and maintained that coordination between the security forces was “at its best.”
A unit coordinating strategic intelligence in the anti-terror struggle is already operating at the Public Security Undersecretariat, he said.
In comments on a prosecutor’s recent request to question Fidan and four other MİT officials, Atalay said Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan would decide whether to permit the probe after inspectors attached to his office study the request. There is no deadline for him to decide, he said.
In further remarks, Atalay said there was no formal decision to introduce the Kurdish language as an elective course in schools but added that “the issue is part of our agenda in terms of the national unity project.” He also renewed the government’s commitment to pluralism but warned that “the continuation of terror is preventing many steps in this process.”
The security forces do not expect major disturbances at the Nevruz festival on March 21.
